London's criminal families replaced by ethnic gangs

The extent of the shift from family crime gangs modelled on the Krays to international networks rooted in ethnic minorities has been uncovered in a police intelligence report.

Scotland Yard has identified 180 crime gangs, speaking 24 languages, who are thought to be responsible for a third of murders in London.

Almost half, 47 per cent, are classed as "cultural networks" whose members are bound by a common language or homeland.

Police have made Turkish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Colombian gangs - whose victims are often from their own communities - their top priority.

By contrast, only nine per cent of the gangs are centred on one family. Most of the rest, 42 per cent, are neighbourhood-based or headed by gangsters who met in jail. The remaining two per cent meet only via the internet, to commit fraud or exchange paedophile images.

Detectives headed by Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur have listed the gang members and their crimes on a document known as The Matrix to try to determine which present the most urgent problem. The Yard hopes to disrupt 100 gangs by next April by means of arrests and prosecutions.

When detectives uncover a gang, they monitor its activities before moving in to raid its premises. The aim is to identify the kingpin and obtain evidence to secure conviction for a major crime.

Gangs tend not to specialise in a particular type of offence, but switch between drug dealing, prostitution, fraud or people-smuggling as opportunities arise. Two thirds of the 180 gangs are involved in Britain's £7 billion-a-year drugs trade, while half operate across borders.

The intelligence document, drafted by Scotland Yard's strategy adviser, Anna Aquilina, and presented to the Metropolitan Police Authority, says: "Changes in technology, travel and the diversity of London's communities are reflected in the growing complexity and presence of criminal networks."

Mr Ghaffur said: "The average Londoner will not be directly affected by criminal network activity, but we must recognise the disproportionate harm that they are causing to some communities."

When the drug lord, Abdullah Baybasin, was convicted in January of plotting to supply class A drugs, police claimed that he and his Kurdish gang, from eastern Turkey, had once controlled 90 per cent of Britain's heroin supply.

Wheelchair bound Baybasin, 45, later pleaded guilty to conspiring to blackmail and pervert the course of justice and awaits sentence. Ten members of his gang were jailed for five to 16 years for kidnap, heroin supply and other offences.

In the 1960s Ronnie and Reggie Kray ruled the east London underworld and were locked in a deadly feud with the Richardson gang from south London. Today's most notorious family gang is the Adams clan, of Camden Town, known as the A-Team.

Thomas Adams was acquitted in 1986 of handling gold from the £26 million Brinks Mat raid while Robert Adams was convicted of leading the failed attempt to steal £250 million of gems from the Millennium Dome in 2000.

Scotland Yard has also warned that professional armed robbers are being replaced by "chaotic" gangs whose raids lack planning.

The new breed of robbers strike on the spur of the moment, avoiding banks for the softer targets of betting shops or late night petrol stations. They are younger, quicker to use violence and spend their hauls on drugs.